Monday, March 17, 2008

Gloom and Doom about "Recession" - not for online retailers...

If you listen to the news (and I really feel sorry for those who take them seriously), you'll notice that Obama has just inherited a full scale recession and has his vice-president Clinton all over government bail-outs while he reinstitutes FDR's socialist programs...

No, seriously - look, the global economy goes through a recession about every six years or so. And presidents don't cause recessions, they are just the fall guys for it. Recessions are just adjustments. They become Depressions when the government steps in and tries to solve things.

Current problem? Greedy bankers and real estate companies. Situation was over-valued houses and the scam that a house is an "asset" you pay on for 30 years. (Assets make you money, they don't cost you money. A house that is fully paid off is an asset. A rental house or an apartment complex that are bringing in more money than they cost you to maintain are assets.)

What to do? Ride it out. Let a few banks get swallowed up for a fraction of what they're worth. Make some bogus real estate agents go get a real job, instead of scamming people.

How to ride it out? Online marketing and sales. If you hadn't noticed, people are buying more and more online every single year, regardless of the brick-and-mortar folks. Actually, near exponential growth.

Paypal accepts Euros - doesn't it?

Cheaper dollar means Europe can buy more from us. This makes our agricultural products very nice-looking. And so we can quit subsidizing our farmers by paying them to not raise crops. Yes, the stuff we import is going to cost more. So we make more locally - sounds like some jobs are going to be coming back from overseas...

Oh - and what happens with the rest of the planet? Well, they are pretty much tied in with us, so our recession is their recession. The Euro is high right now? Don't look over your shoulder - things balance out over time.

But if you're selling your product through the Internet, especially low-input products like information, you can say, "Recession, what recession?" - because your overseas friends will see incredible value in your now-bargain-priced-in-American-dollars product.

What about all of the gloom and doom stories fretting about the economic slowdown impacting spending on marketing and advertising in general? Hotchkiss said that the increased growth in search marketing is happening at the expense of print magazine advertising, website development and other marketing functions. "It shows that people are looking at reallocation of budgets—we've heard that anecdotally from clients as well," he said.

The North American SEM industry grew to $12.2 billion in 2007, a 30% increase over 2006 spending of $9.4 billion. While the growth rate slowed from the torrid 62% increase in 2006 spending, total spend nonetheless exceeded earlier projections of $11.5 billion for 2007. And significantly, North American SEM spending is now projected to grow to $25.2 billion in 2011, up significantly from the $18.6 billion forecast a year ago.

The drivers behind the higher estimate are advertiser demand, rising costs of keywords and pay-per-click campaigns, an increase in the number of small-to-midsized businesses using search engine marketing, greater consumer participation in search and increased interest in behavioral and demographic targeting of searchers.
The State Of Search Engine Marketing 2007
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